


war cry

by deathstranded



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Again, Alcohol, Cuba, Dark Will, Dark Will Graham, Donald Trump Jokes, Hannibal Lecter Has a Crush, Hannibal Loves Will, Hannibal's a lush, M/M, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Psychopaths In Love, So is Will, Will Graham Doesn't Need Help, Will-centric, actually i can, brief violence against a woman, i cannot believe that's a tag, i guess lol, just one, not because of her gender just because of who she is, obviously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 08:42:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9988208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathstranded/pseuds/deathstranded
Summary: 'In the moment, Will does not know why he throws himself and Hannibal off the cliff. He just does.'in their new home, will and hannibal recuperate. will thinks, and waits, and weighs up his own morality.





	

**Author's Note:**

> apparently i can only write post-wotl stuff. sorry.

_i want to run my fingers through his pelt_

_matted with mud_

_and with blood_

 

_i do not want smooth marble castles_

_i want mortar eaten away by nature_

_i want the smell of wet moss and wood rot_

_i want the leafs and bugs in his fur_

_i want the deer he catches between his teeth_

_i want kingdoms to tremble when they hear my name_

_entwined with his_

_i want my marriage to be a war cry_

 

_i do not want to teach him_

_how to be a prince_

_i want him to teach me_

_how to be a monster_

 

\- [hedgewitches, “the beauty loves a beast”](http://hedgewitches.tumblr.com/post/71679443800/the-beauty-loves-a-beast)

 

In the moment, Will does not know why he throws himself and Hannibal off the cliff. He just does.

-

Hannibal never asks him why.

They escape to Cuba.

Hannibal procures fake identification documents for them; fake passports, fake driver’s licenses. Some of them, he has waited for for years; had arranged for them to be made when he planned to escape to Florence, and had assumed Will and Abigail would be joining him. Will doesn’t like to think too deeply about that.

On the ones they use in Cuba, their names are listed as Claudio Calvino and Robert Norton. There are other documents too, back-ups. Will’s names on these are Elijah, Henry, Thomas, Samuel, Oscar.

He feels fake, too. That is what he tells himself.

-

In the dark, in the night, when he cannot sleep, he wonders why.

 _Because I wanted to die,_ he thinks. _Because I wanted him to die._

These are the only answers he allows himself.

-

He could, of course, plead coercion.

His fingerprints will be all over the knife that was tossed into the ocean along with Dolarhyde’s body, but he could say that Hannibal threatened him; made him do it.

He could argue insanity.

He could have a psychiatrist declare him unfit to stand trial; another psychiatrist, any other psychiatrist.

Jack would want to believe it. So would Alana. So would Molly.

The thing is, he knows Hannibal would let this happen. It kills him.

-

They hardly speak at all on the boat. Hannibal tends to his wounds, and to Will’s, and the whole journey reeks of aftermath; feels curiously like the morning after the night before; like a one-night stand, collecting one’s clothes, cleaning up, preparing to leave, not making eye contact.

Only it goes on and on and on, for days, with nothing to stare at but the wide, wide sea.

He feels Hannibal looking at him, sometimes, mournfully.

He closes his eyes, and listens to the waves, concentrates on moving the boat with the wind.

-

The first issue is this: if he had intended on killing himself – and only himself – that night on top of the cliff, why had he taken Hannibal down with him? He thinks it over, and reasons that Hannibal was holding onto him; that he was thinking only of hurling himself down to the sea and the rocks below, and so when Hannibal fell too it was an accident. Just – an accident.

(He thinks about how he leant all his weight against Hannibal, turned his body towards him, pushed –)

The other thing is, he is not suicidal. He has been, before, and he knows he is not, not now, and he knows he was not suicidal that night on the cliff top, above the sparkling ocean.

He was ecstatic.

-

Not for the first time, he thinks about killing Hannibal.

If it was not his own death he was trying to cause back then, he decides, it was probably Hannibal’s.

He had accepted that the only way to kill Hannibal, to kill the Chesapeake Ripper, to kill the Cannibal, was to carve a vital organ from Hannibal’s body, exorcise it like a demon; take something he could not possibly live without.

The only way to kill Hannibal was to kill himself.

That way, Hannibal would go peacefully; willingly. He would be his executioner. He would take his hand, lead him gently to his gallows; to the crushing depths of the Atlantic, and if that meant losing his own life in the process – so be it.

-

Things rarely work out how we imagine they will.

-

Their existence in Cuba is peaceful.

The sky is blue, and the air is warm, and they can lie in the shade and lick their wounds.

They have both lost weight; Will on the journey from the US, Hannibal from the combination of that and his stint in prison.

Hannibal cooks for him, and Will realises he had not known just how much he had missed his food. He thinks about people saying things like, “Just how mom used to make,” how they claim flavours take them back to their childhoods. Will had never understood – his father was a terrible cook, and he never had a mother, so he learnt to fend for himself, albeit poorly, at a young age – but when Hannibal sets the table, and pours him wine (not local; Hannibal is still a snob, though he has found a nearby shop that sells what he deems to be “acceptable” South American vintages), and bends to place a plate before him that looks more alike to a modern sculpture than dinner, he finds himself close to tearing up.

“Do you like it?” Hannibal asks, once they have started to eat.

Will nods, swallowing around the hard, bitter lump in his throat. “It’s delicious.”

-

The problem is this; years ago, Will had claimed if he were to kill Hannibal, it would be with his hands.

This was not a lie.

This has not changed.

But taking Hannibal down from a cliff top with him is not the same as killing him with his hands.

If Will were to kill Hannibal by means of submersion in deep water, he would like to hold him down beneath the surface; tie his wrists together, perhaps, place his palms across the back of Hannibal’s neck, watch and feel his body buck and struggle like a wild horse beneath him, see the violent bubbles rise and froth rapidly around his wet head, slowing, just a little, slowly, slowly…until at last Hannibal’s body shuddered one final time and fell limp underneath his, and all Will’s world went quiet, forever.

If Will were to drown Hannibal, he would do it purposefully. He would not leave a thing to chance.

-

On the boat they had shared a bed out of necessity, when they wanted to sleep at the same time, or when their wounds hurt so much they had to rest.

In the house in Cuba, there are two beds; two bedrooms. There is a lock on his bedroom door, but Will never feels the need to use it. It occurs to him, vaguely one day, as these things are wont to do, that he has never once been afraid of Hannibal. The notion strikes him as amusing. Still, Hannibal never enters his room – not to his knowledge, anyhow, and Will thinks he would know. Hannibal never hurts him; never tries to. He also never tries to escape from Will.

Will knows that he’ll never attempt to do that either.

-

It is not, of course, as though his options are black and white; return to Baltimore versus stay with Hannibal. He thinks it through, on nights when he cannot sleep, narrating his own numerous possible futures. He could run, alone, north or south. He could kill Hannibal. He could kill himself. He could kill Hannibal, then himself. He could kill everyone on the island, or try to, and then kill Hannibal, and then himself. The body count rises in his mind at night, when he lays on his back and stares at the ceiling.

Will is under no illusions. Not anymore. He cannot run away. Hannibal is far too clever to let him escape. (This is what he thinks the first night.)

On the second night he is more honest with himself. He would not _want_ to run away. Not really. They have tried separation. It does not work. Hannibal ends up doing things like impersonating professors at foreign universities, kidnapping people, getting himself locked up in prison and wasting away, maudlin and lovesick. Will ends up marrying strange women he hardly knows, just to block out the voices and pictures in his head. His time with Molly was mildly pleasant but unsustainable, like play-acting as a child. A distraction, a pretence, a game. Eventually, one grew bored with it all.

Besides, he has learnt by now they are like magnets. No matter how far they stray the pull remains. They always come back together in the end, colliding like a fist against bone, like a blade against flesh, painfully. It is far easier.

It is far more pleasant too.  

It is nice not have a head ringing with countless voices; just two.

-

In their house, they continue to recuperate.

In their house, they talk, about everything and nothing.

Hannibal changes bandages, checks stitches.

His hands are warm and gentle against Will’s most bruised and tender skin.

-

So his second option, then, is to kill Hannibal. If he cannot escape the man alive, perhaps he stands some chance against him dead.

Of course, he has already tried this. Hannibal has tried to kill him too, of course. None of their attempts have worked. Will has no reason to think another go will bring about a different result.  

He reflects on their unlocked bedroom doors late at night.

Once, at around three in the morning, when his healing wounds hurt and he cannot get comfortable, he gets up. He crosses the hallway to Hannibal’s room.

Hannibal is asleep, mouth slightly open, one arm flung above his head, palm towards the high ceiling, fingers curled.

Will stares, mesmerised.

Hannibal does not wake. He just breathes slowly, deeply, evenly, eyelids perfectly still, submerged in dreamless, peaceful darkness, his bare chest rising and falling rhythmically, hypnotically.

The silver light from the moon outside picks out his nose bridge, his cheekbones, the bow of his lips, the hair on his torso. His skin looks blue.

Will watches for a long time, until his face feels heavy, then he turns, and slips back into his own room, and falls asleep.

The thought of sinking a knife into Hannibal’s unguarded body does not occur to him again.

He may be a killer, he thinks, but not that sort. Neither is Hannibal. He does not deserve that kind of ending.

-

“Let me take your stitches out,” Hannibal says, one morning, whilst Will is drinking coffee at the kitchen table.

All of Will’s injuries are healing nicely and all the sutures have been removed, save for those underlining one particularly nasty deep slash on his waist that has been slow to repair itself.

“Do you think it’ll be okay?” Will says. The wound still hurts, and though he has accepted that it will scar, he does not want to risk doing anything that might add to its healing time or make it any worse than it already is.

On the other side of the table, Hannibal stands up. “Allow me to see?” he says.

Will hikes up the side of his shirt, feeling decidedly nude in comparison to Hannibal, who is already showered and dressed. He looks away as Hannibal crouches, wincing a little at his own injuries, peering at the line of neat little threads.

It is not as though he is uncertain of Hannibal’s feelings anymore. His empathy had not made allowances for this particular, nerve-wracking subject. He has suspected for a long time now that Hannibal felt – something – for him. Fascination. Lust. Obsession. Love, in whatever weird way cannibalistic serial killers experience that odd emotion. Bedelia confirming Hannibal’s feelings for him had been entirely unsurprising, though her words had sent a terrified frisson through his body nonetheless. Fear, excitement, arousal – weren’t they all terribly similar in the end? They were for Will, anyhow.

To his credit, though, Hannibal has been a perfect gentleman since their encounter with the dragon. Will has not noticed any attempts at emotional or psychological manipulation. He is not certain they would work anymore, anyway. Not on him. Not now, not after everything. Hannibal continues to handle Will in the way he always has when he’s been injured; gently, kindly, even. Right now his touches are professional, as though Will were any other patient, and Hannibal any other doctor, making a house call.

“I can take these out now, if you like,” Hannibal says to him. “I think it would be best.”

“Okay.”

“Let me fetch my scissors.” Hannibal has a pair of small, very sharp scissors he keeps in a first-aid box in the tiled laundry room that stands just off the kitchen. The scissors have, over the past couple of weeks, snipped steadily away at every little thread binding them to their past existences; to their status as wanted fugitives in the US.

Hannibal stands and leaves the room.

Will remains still, shirt still raised over his belly, until he returns, and lowers himself to the floor again.

“I could stand up,” Will says. “Or sit on the table.”

“Why would you do that?” Hannibal says.

Will shrugs. “Don’t want you to hurt yourself bending down,” he says.

Hannibal looks up at him from his position on the floor, half smiling in that funny way of his. “I am not that old, Will.”

“You got hurt too,” Will says.

Hannibal ignores him; proceeds to cut his stitches out. Will stiffens against the faint tugs, remains as still as he can be, biting down hard on his lower lip. When he is done Hannibal places the scissors on the table, pulls himself to his feet, and strokes the pad of his thumb down the line of Will’s raised pink flesh once; the only semblance of something non-platonic that has passed between them since they got off the boat.

Will stiffens; holds his breath.

“I’m sorry,” Hannibal says, quite suddenly, apparently remembering himself.

Will looks away, cheeks hot. He waits until he hears Hannibal turn around to face the table. “It’s okay,” he says.

They say no more about it.

-

Their mornings in Cuba are nice. The light is soft; the pace slow.

They read; they talk; they recover.

Weeks pass.

As they grow stronger, they venture out more. Hannibal takes him out for lunch one day, at a small restaurant tucked away down a dark, narrow alleyway in town, where a mixture of tourists and locals – mainly soft-spoken middle aged and elderly couples – eat and drink and talk.

Hannibal, who is incapable of keeping his mouth shut for love nor money, gets chatting with the proprietor, apologising for his rusty Spanish.

Will panics at first, but the old man does not seem to recognise them through his misty eyes, and apparently neither does his wife who waves at them from behind the bar.

Hannibal notices his uncertainty; reaches for him; pats his hand once.

The proprietor introduces himself to Will.

Will nervously explains he has spoken little Spanish since High School.

“American?” says the old man.

“Sí,” Will says.

Hannibal explains that he is Danish-Italian by birth; he moved to the US to attend college. They met through work; both had stressful but well-paid jobs and are here to enjoy an early retirement. Will begins to relax, lulled by Hannibal’s story; by the past and present and future lives he creates for them, lying beautifully and effortlessly. He relocates himself easily into the mind of this unknown, fictional man, this man who is both him and not him, this man who Hannibal – Hannibal’s character – met through work, who has come with him to Cuba, who he lives with and goes to lunch with and who touches his hand.

What did you do? the old man asks.

Hannibal was a surgeon.

Ah, says the old man, well, if you ever want to get back in business, my wife, she has trouble with her knees.

Hannibal translates this all to Will on their walk home under the warm afternoon sun.

They return to the restaurant several times, always at lunch, and Hannibal suggests some exercises that might help stiff knees.  

Their days are pleasant.

-

Will thinks about killing himself, and finds he does not want to. He has not wanted to for a while now.

He will not kill himself to escape this peaceful madness that is their life now. He will not kill himself, and he will not kill Hannibal.

-

They continue to recuperate, getting stronger and stronger. Will regains his ability to stretch upwards, fingers pointed at the ceiling, without any tearing pain in his side. Hannibal can raise both his arms over his head; bend at the waist. Neither is as flexible or supple as he used to be, and they probably never will be. Nevertheless, Will feels better than he has done in a long time. He suspects it is a combination of rest, sunlight, and Hannibal’s cooking.

Hannibal, too, has regained the weight he had lost and is beginning to look like his old self again. His hair is a little longer now – back to its previous familiar length, the length it was when they first met – and he is running and swimming again, building back up old muscles. He swims in the sea whenever the tide is up.

Will doesn’t particularly want to re-enter the ocean. Not for a long time, anyhow. A boat would be fine, but the idea of the water closing in around his neck again unsettles him, though he does not admit this to Hannibal.

Still, the ocean looks lovely at night, and sometimes when they sit out on the veranda under the red sky in the evening, Will recalls something he said to Hannibal years ago, about his house at Wolf Trap looking like a lonely boat on the ocean, and his time spent inside it being the only time he felt safe.

He feels similarly now, with the ocean spread out before him, and high walls and thick, luscious vegetation surrounding their property, and wonders, when they sit and gaze out over the slow waves together, whether Hannibal feels it too; whether Hannibal even remembers that conversation. Their old life feels a million miles away, and yet – not. Still close enough to touch, stubbornly lodged within the innermost parts of their selfhoods, despite the snipping of the threads. Will could not put this strangeness into words even if he tried.

One night he asks, “Do you think you’ll ever kill someone again?”

Hannibal looks at him, amused.

“What a question,” Hannibal says.

“We are an odd couple,” Will murmurs, then realises what he has just said. He hesitates. He knows Hannibal has tensed up beside him, and he tries to think of something to say to diffuse the atmosphere. He can think of nothing. His face is warm in the cool evening air.

At last, Hannibal says, “I would have thought that question was more applicable to yourself. Have you got the taste for it now?”

“That was a shitty joke,” Will says. “All your jokes are shitty, by the way. I never told you, but I wish I had done. You’re not funny.”

Hannibal just laughs.  

“Anyway,” Will says, “Killing someone because they were rude to you and you need to finish your weekly grocery shop is a pretty dumb motive.”

Hannibal says, “Are you saying the other motives weren’t dumb?”

Will just smiles, and he feels Hannibal watching him, and he knows that he is smiling too.

-

It occurs one day to Will that he has not seen Hannibal so happy in a long time.

Hannibal, of course, has a vivid imagination. He is capable of entertaining himself anywhere; even in prison. Will knows this all too well.

Still, he has not witnessed him in this state – so genuinely at ease with his life, contented by external factors as well as internal ones – for a long, long time. He has certainly never seen him this relaxed. Back in Baltimore, back in their old lives, Hannibal had been a constant source of energy. Sometimes Will fancies if he had pressed an ear to Hannibal’s chest back then, he would have heard a quick ticking, like the sound a clock makes, or a wind-up toy, or a cartoon bomb. Hannibal had always been doing something – out at one of his events, the opera, cooking, throwing a party, working, consulting. Even when Hannibal was sitting down he was busy. He never shut up. Will could see the thoughts rapidly moving behind his eyes like the changing images on an old film reel.

Now, he seems quietly content.

The parties, Will realises, the flamboyant frivolities, the busyness, were all carefully honed and crafted – lovingly, yes, and Hannibal enjoyed it – but they all served a greater purpose; all formed part of a much larger act. And perhaps they even functioned, at least in part, as an outlet for that mind of his. God knew that Will understood well enough how it felt to have violent thoughts and cruel ideas and sharp insight claw away at your skull from the inside out day after day after day.

Here, Hannibal just watches him, unabashedly; talks to him; draws him, cooks for him, and that – that seems to be enough.

The question of whether or not Hannibal will want to kill again gnaws quietly at Will’s mind.

-

And then it comes to Will – one day, quite out of the blue – why he threw himself and Hannibal off the cliff, why he has chosen to stay, why he has not run away yet, or slit his own throat, or Hannibal’s, or both.

It is evening and they are sat outside, as usual, drinking Hannibal’s newest alcoholic purchase. This one is a rosé. Will has his legs stretched out, kicked up onto the low, ugly table that had been sold to them along with the house. Hannibal had declared it an abomination and tried to throw it out, but it was at the perfect height for Will to rest his feet on, and so, irritably, Hannibal had yielded, on the condition that it remain outside on the veranda.

They do not speak. Hannibal, Will knows, has his head tipped to one side; one leg hitched over the knee of the other. He is looking at Will, as usual. He is always looking at Will.

Will is vaguely reminded of other evenings like this; of times in the past when he sat outside another house, a smaller one, alone, but for his pack of dogs. Hannibal is gazing at him in much the same way they used to, and Will thinks it is funny how he practically has Hannibal on a leash these days.

And – quite suddenly – there it is. That is why.

Will dragged Hannibal into the ocean with him, travelled to Cuba with him, stays in this house of his own free will with him, because this is the only way to permanently imprison Hannibal.

He has Hannibal on a leash. He has the beast on a leash, and if he were to abandon his beast, he would go feral; vicious and starved for affection.

Here, in Cuba, with him, Hannibal is calm and quiet and satiated.

If Will were not here; if he had returned to Baltimore and to Jack, if he were to run away, if he were dead, Hannibal would be a loose cannon.

“I'm curious whether either of us can survive separation,” Hannibal had once said to him, and Will thinks, now, on their veranda watching the sunset: Yes, yes we could. They could survive, but it was doubtful anybody else would.

Here he is, he thinks, a faithful servant to the law until the end, living out his days on this island, Hannibal Lecter’s unholy keeper.

-

He thinks about writing to Jack.

 _Dear Jack,_ he writes, in his head: _Do not worry about me. Do not be angry. Do not come looking. He will not hurt anyone again. I can promise you that. I am his cage._

He looks up, out of the window. Beyond the garden, beyond the road, Hannibal runs along the beach, one foot in the sea, one in the sand, strength almost fully restored.

Will watches him, and thinks, what a cage.

-

A tropical storm rolls in steadily over the horizon, clouds unfurling like a great grey hand poised to snatch up the sand and plants and roads and people and buildings in its path.

Outside, it begins to rain, and the trees that stand as sentinels in their garden and line the street beyond thrash violently in the wind.

“Better break out the pack of cards,” Will says, and Hannibal laughs.

They break out the alcohol, too; more wine, and whiskey, and after dinner, rum, in honour, Hannibal says, of their new home, though neither is particularly fond of it, truth be told. 

“Shouldn’t be mixing our drinks,” Will says, after a while. His head is fuzzy; light, but not unpleasantly so. He is happy. “You’re a doctor. Ain’t that the first thing they teach you in doctor school?”

“Medical school,” Hannibal says, the skin beside the outside corners of his eyes folding over itself. Will has never seen him drunk before. Not that he’s bad; his accent is just a little thicker; he over-enunciates his words, and moves his hands and his body very deliberately, exaggeratedly. He spreads his fingers, gesturing at the bottles before him, pale eyebrows raised.

“Whiskey, please,” Will says, and rests his chin in his palm whilst Hannibal pours him another glass.

Here, in the house, with the storm shutters closed, and the wind howling and the rain pouring down outside, their table laden with plates and bottles and glasses, Hannibal carefully serving him another drink, he feels quiet content. You could almost call it cosy, he thinks, the atmosphere; kind of domestic, and the thought makes him snort, and his elbow wobbles against the table top.

“Something amusing?” Hannibal says, looking up. He pushes the tumbler towards him.

“Nothing,” Will says, “just…” He trails off, gesturing between them.

“What?”

“Y’know. This. It’s kinda funny. Look at us. Playing house.”

Hannibal smiles. “If this is a game, I think we may be winning, dear Will.”

“Who’re we beating?”

He knows the answer before Hannibal even says it – _everyone_ – and it’s a rush, both of them knowing that, knowing somebody else so well and so deeply, and agreeing with them – yes, they are beating everyone.

They sit in silence, watching one another, listening to the storm churning around them, and to the sounds of the old house groaning, and to each other’s breathing.

“I asked you a question,” Will says, at last, “a little while back. You didn’t answer.”

“What question was that?”

Will hesitates. “Would you kill again?” he says, then stops. No, that’s wrong. “Will you kill somebody again?”

Hannibal looks at him over the rum of his wine glass. “Who is somebody?”

Will throws his hands up, sits back in his chair, frustrated. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Anybody!”

“It does matter. I will not kill you, for example.”

“I’m honoured…so you’re saying you will kill again?”

“That is not what I said.”

“You said you wouldn’t kill me. That’s not the question I asked.”

Hannibal sits back in his chair, crosses his legs. “Name a person, and I will tell you if I would try to kill them.”

Will rolls his eyes, sits forwards, folds his arms on top of the table. “Okay, I’ll bite. Mmm…Mr. Padilla from the restaurant.”

“Of course not.”

“Mrs. Padilla?”

“No!”

“Okay, okay.” Will pauses, takes a sip. “Donald Trump?”

Hannibal’s nose wrinkles. “If the opportunity presented itself then certainly.”

Will says, “You could serve him like a duck,” then, without waiting for Hannibal to even ask the question, adds, “à l’orange,” then cracks up.

Hannibal shakes his head, but he is smiling, and when Will manages to calm himself down a little and look up, his eyes snag in Hannibal’s gaze, and he feels it – the surge of warmth, of affection, and desire for closeness boiling over into overwhelming obsession and need – the feelings Hannibal has for him, the feelings he has in the past so carefully controlled and that Will has fought so hard to ignore. He knows Hannibal feels it too – the moment Will catches him – because he looks away, not because he is embarrassed, Will knows (he doesn’t suppose the other man has been embarrassed a day in his life), but because he sees what Will has felt, and he does not want to overwhelm him. Little by little, he thinks. Hannibal is steadily turning the screws, of course, as he always does. Slowly, day by day, he has been allowing his gaze to linger on Will a little longer; not only on his eyes, but on his lips, his jaw and neck, his hands, his shoulders and chest – on the rare occasions Hannibal catches them bare – and down the curve of his back, slowly, to his waist and his hips and lower. Every day he looks slightly further, a tad longer, acclimates Will to just a little more intimacy in their relationship. It is like boiling a lobster.

Will takes another drink, and stares down at his own hands, allowing his mind to drain of the other’s emotions until he hears Hannibal pouring himself another glass of wine.

Now is the moment, he supposes.

He swallows.

“Jack?” he says.

He looks up.

Hannibal is eyeing him carefully.

“Alana?” he says. “Margot? Jimmy Price? Brian Zeller?”

A moment passes. Outside, the thunder claps, and somewhere, deeper within the house, air whistles in through a window that has not been completely closed, sounding like an anxious ghost.

Hannibal says, “If they were to come here; if they were to find us, to try to catch us – then yes, I would. If you are asking me: will I seek them out? Will I return to America for the sole purpose of hunting them down and killing them, then no.” He does not break eye contact with Will. “Not unless you were to request it.”

Despite the weather outside, the room suddenly feels very still. Will thinks he can hear his blood pounding in his own ears, then wonders if that adrenaline is actually Hannibal’s. He doesn’t know what to say. The possibility that _he_ could request – could direct – Hannibal’s kills has never once occurred to him, which is mad. It is flattering. His world view begins to shift, and a multiplicity of possible futures unfurl like ferns before him. Insanely, he feels like he is being proposed to.

Hannibal leans forwards, looks him earnestly in the eye. Will cannot look away. “In that case, I would consider it the greatest possible honour.”

-

The thing is, Will is not like the killers he once hunted. Not really. Not as similar as certain people might think (Freddie Lounds.)

Killing people like Francis Dolarhyde – like Garrett Jacob Hobbs – felt good, felt right, because it _was_ right. There was no death penalty in Minnesota, and there hadn’t been one for years, but Will knew, had he not killed Hobbs himself, had he instead managed to subdue and handcuff him, had he been convicted at trial (which he would have been), there would have been plenty of people baying for his blood. Many of them, he suspected, in the FBI.

Will was neither here nor there morally on the subject of capital punishment, but in the case of a man like that, or a man like Dolarhyde, he was of the belief that the adage “an eye for an eye” was perfectly applicable and just.

Will is not like Hannibal – will never be like Hannibal, he is sure – because they are motivated by entirely different things. They have been raised and cultivated very differently. Even now, for all their minds have melded and melted into each other, for all they have changed one another – they are not the same, no matter how deeply Hannibal wishes it were so. (Hannibal is a romantic; a dreamer; this is something Will has discovered.) Will could never kill a person simply for being rude to him, because he himself is an incredibly rude person, though not necessarily on purpose. He is just difficult, he thinks. He is honestly surprised Hannibal had not attempted to murder him sooner. Will doesn’t think he could kill just anybody, simply to prove a point, or create a work of art, or for whatever other insane reasons Hannibal has killed over the years. Will knows he could kill someone who deserved it. He already has, after all. Hannibal could do that too, but he could also happily kill someone who didn’t deserve it in the slightest; someone who was simply in his way, or even just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

-

Will thinks for several days about what Hannibal said to him during the storm. One night, he goes up to bed, a little tipsy, because of the alcohol, and a little sticky, because of the close, muggy weather they’ve been suffering under. He decides to shower, and under the hot water, where his head is soft and his eyes are closed and his thoughts buzz like listless flies, he thinks again about those words; about Hannibal killing for him; killing on command.

The thought arouses him – which is horrific – but he cannot quite bear the idea of switching the shower to cold, of plunging his body into icy water once more, and so he reluctantly goes with it, and experiences the most confusing jerk-off of his life, rushing through it roughly just to force the idea to vacate his head. When he comes, he is not sure if he had pictured the actual act, the kill as a real possible occurrence, or the idea of it, the metaphorical notion of the beast on a leash, or just Hannibal himself. He doesn’t think too long on it.

-

“You haven’t killed anyone since we got here,” Will says.

They are on the beach together, looking out over the sea. The tide creeps up the sand towards them. It is night, and they have just got back from dinner.

“Neither have you,” says Hannibal.

“I would say it’s more of an achievement for you than for me. What was your last estimated victim count? Sixty? At least?”

“Why do you keep bringing this up?”

Will inhales, slowly. He wonders when it was he got to this point; discussing the deaths of around sixty other human beings as though Hannibal had forgotten to buy milk or come home late for dinner or something. He wonders when he started thinking of a serial-killing cannibal in terms of a life partner. Then again, he himself is one.

He shifts his weight upon the sand, hands tucked into his pockets, staring resolutely at a point in the distance.

“If we’re gonna make this work, Hannibal, things can’t be like they used to be. You can’t go around killing random people because they pissed you off and throwing dinner parties with their bodies and making dumb puns about cannibalism because it gets you off to know you’re the smartest person in the room. You know damn well you do one thing – one little ostentatious, showy thing that draws attention to yourself, the FBI are gonna be on us like flies on shit. Don’t wrinkle your nose like that, you know it’s true. And it’s not just you anymore. They come for you, they come for me. You think you can treat me like you treated Alana? Like you treated Bedelia? You think I’m just gonna turn a blind eye and beg and cry when the cops come for us? Like hell I am. I’m complicit, and I’m not about to act like I didn’t have a choice, like I can’t possibly take any ownership of what we’ve done, like I couldn’t fight back, like those people dropped dead around me and I couldn’t do a thing to stop it.”

He’s mad, suddenly, and he doesn’t know why. He turns to look at the other man, fists clenched, body full – of what, he does not know, but – something.

“I’m doing my part. I pulled us off that cliff. I got us here to Cuba. You couldn’t have done that without me. You know I could’ve called Jack at any time – any time! – and he would have been here in hours, and fuck the extradition treaty, you know there’s ways around that. I’m not gonna rat you out, and I’ll help you stay low-profile; you know nobody’s gonna recognise Will Graham with a tan and freckles and sunglasses and a damn scar down his face next to you with your – your stupid mouth, and your stupid cheekbones. You’d better take damn good care of me and not do a thing to blow our cover, because you know there’s one person in this world who could kill you, Hannibal, and he’s standing right next to you. So stop – stop talking in circles round the issue and tell me – promise me – you won’t do anything that could draw attention to us – you won’t kill anyone, you won’t throw any stupid parties, you won’t do so much as buy a flashy fucking suit without consulting me first.”

He stops, winded.

Hannibal is looking at him as though he has suddenly sprung an extra head – two extra heads – with eyes on stalks. For once in his life, it seems as though he is lost for words.

“Well?” Will demands.

Hannibal swallows; Will watches the movement of his throat.

“I promise,” he says, at last.

Will does not break eye contact. He’s getting better at it, though it still leaves him feeling shaky and uncomfortable after the fact.

“You’re nothing like – them,” Hannibal says, and Will is perversely pleased he did not use Alana or worse, Bedelia’s names. He tries very hard not to think about what this means. “You are – Will, you – please believe I would not do a thing to jeopardise what we have.” He looks stricken.

Unable to bear it, Will looks back out to sea. The water is darker now, closer. “Not on purpose,” he says.

“I would not,” Hannibal insists.

Will looks back at him. “No, you won’t,” he says. “Not now.”

-

For the first few days after this incident, their house is quiet. Will feels antsy and determined, for some reason, stalking from room to room purposefully, though of course he does not have a thing to do.

Conversely, Hannibal is quieter. When they talk, he is more literal; straightforward. He cooks the meals he knows Will enjoys most.

One day, at lunch, Hannibal clears his throat, and says, “Would it make you happier if you had a dog, Will?”

Will coughs on his water. “What?”

“I said, would it make you happier –”

“No, I mean – I know what you said. Why’re you asking that?”

Hannibal continues eating, looking down at his plate, seemingly going for casual. “I know you were very fond of your dogs, back in…” He trails off. “Well. I am sorry you had to leave them behind.”

Will can think of nothing to say, other than, “You hate dogs!”

Hannibal looks slightly affronted. “I don’t hate them,” he says, finally looking up. “Just because one chooses not to have pets does not mean one hates them. We had dogs when I was a child. Besides,” he adds, “I do not think a canine would have been quite compatible with my…lifestyle…in Baltimore.”

“Yeah, well,” says Will, “Still. You’re not fond of them.”

“I am fond of you,” Hannibal says simply.

Will stuffs a forkful of food into his mouth.

Hannibal says nothing more.

“I guess I’ll think about it,” says Will. He chews, slowly, and swallows. “What kind of dogs did you have?” he asks.

-

Will dreams. Mostly of nothing; inconsequential images that seep from his skull the moment morning begins to break over the line separating sea from sky.

One time he dreams of Bedelia.

He dreams he is in her dining room – he thinks it is her dining room – and he is sitting at her table with her on his left, Hannibal on his right.

Her eyes are black; hard as shiny pebbles.

He dreams he looks at her; stares at her; and in that moment she fully comprehends what it is he intends to do. She does not – cannot – move.

He dreams that he looks at Hannibal; meets his eyes. Hannibal is waiting for him, motionless too, patient.

He nods.

Hannibal rises, moves smoothly around the table, fluid, like water, like silk. He stands next to Bedelia. Will picks up the knife beside his empty plate. He passes it to Hannibal. Hannibal turns towards Bedelia, places his palm atop hers. There is nothing romantic, or friendly, or even nice about it.

He watches as Hannibal behins to slice off her fingers slowly, neatly, one by one.

She doesn’t scream. The dream is mostly soundless, save for the soft sound of the blade slicing through flesh, scraping its way through bone.

He does not look at Bedelia – not because he is afraid, or disgusted. She is inconsequential. He looks at Hannibal. And somehow, despite the precise, even movement of the knife, Hannibal looks back at him.

When he wakes he goes straight downstairs; finds Hannibal’s tablet; a new one he has purchased since arriving in Cuba. He unlocks it. There is no longer a passcode. He goes to the browser; types in a name.

-

Days pass; long and warm and lazy; turn into nights where they continue to sit and drink and talk.

Will is enjoying his life as Hannibal’s jailer, for the most part.

Hannibal does not seem to mind it much either.

-

Sometimes he thinks back to the night on the clifftop; to their arrival at the house, to the death of the dragon, to the moment he made that decision to tilt his weight sideways, press his body against Hannibal’s and tip the both of them into the dark depths below, to death, or to their prison; whichever came first.

He thinks back to his state of mind in that moment. Mentally, he has been keeping a list; not suicidal, not vengeful, not frightened. _Resolved_ is the latest entry on his list. But something keeps niggling away at him; a tiny voice that insists _that’s not right either._

Again, he comes back to _ecstatic._

He remembers the moment they touched down, crashing through the waves, shocked by the cold. He remembers Hannibal still having one arm around him. He remembers the world going silent.

They sank, and he had kept his eyes shut against the salt.

He’d felt colder; the loss of Hannibal’s body heat as he’d drifted away from him beneath the water. He remembers his mind going dark and dim and fuzzy; thinking he was about to pass out.

He remembers crowning, bursting back up to the surface; his rebirth. His ears had popped and his head had pounded and he’d opened his eyes and been assaulted by the sights and sounds and smells and sensations crowding around him.

He had not felt pain; that much he knew. He was not in pain, despite the vague knowledge, stored somewhere at the back of his brain, that he had been stabbed multiple times; that he was leaking blood, and that he was exhausted.

He remembers seeing Hannibal rise to the surface beside him; seeing him appear, choking, hair plastered to his skull. He remembers reaching out; discovering that Hannibal was closer than he looked; their fingers knotting together tightly, wetly.

He remembers the struggle back to the shore. He remembers Hannibal panting at his side, breath rattling horribly, and being so sure that there was water in his lungs; too much water; that he would surely drown before their feet touched the land. He remembers Hannibal’s weight pulling him down again, once, twice, three times. He had kept coming back up, though; had kept digging his nails in and tugging, making noises at the other man that may once have been words.

He remembers hitting sand and rocks suddenly, surprisingly. He remembers a particularly sharp edge of something scraping his knee, grazing it. He remembers how hard it was to stand up; how thoroughly soaked his clothes were, and how heavy as a result.

He does not remember how cold it had been, though he knows it was; it must have been.

He remembers tugging Hannibal after him, lurching onto the tiny, stony beach, beating his back until he coughed all that sea water up and was able to push himself semi-upright on shaking forearms.

After this, he remembers the sudden exhaustion; the way it had all hit him at once. Vaguely, he thinks he must have been in shock. He remembers the pain, sudden and sharp. He remembers noticing that his chest was heaving and that he was not upright, as he had previously thought, but instead balanced precariously on his knees.

He remembers collapsing onto his back, gasping, beside Hannibal, and staring up wide-eyed at the midnight sky, and the moon appearing from behind a cloud, and he remembers thinking, ecstatically, _it worked._

-

“What would you have done,” he says to Hannibal, “if I hadn’t pulled us into the ocean that night?”

It is mid-morning; bright and warm.

Hannibal looks thoughtful. “Truly, Will, I had not planned a thing,” he says, and even he looks surprised at himself as he says it. “I think I was just grateful to have you back. You know I could go anywhere with you and be satisfied.”

Will smiles, looking down at his hands. He has not decided what to do with this yet; with Hannibal’s affection. Of course it can be exploited to get what he wants – he has been doing that for a long time – but he would be lying if he claimed he did not feel _something_ for the other man, something that heats his insides, thrilling him, when Hannibal says things like this.

“Lucky for you one of us had a plan,” Will says.

“Yes,” says Hannibal. “Yes, very lucky indeed.”

-

Will looks at himself in the mirror as he brushes his teeth. He looks, and he looks, and he thinks about himself, and he thinks about Hannibal. He thinks about the night on the cliff, and he thinks about the ID Hannibal had ready for a flight to Italy with Will.

He thinks about Francis Dolarhyde, and about Garrett Jacob Hobbs, and about all the horrors he has seen and the horrors he has done, and he thinks about Baltimore and Wolf Trap and his wife, and what he would be doing had he not got involved with Hannibal Lecter.

He thinks about that dimly-lit house; the love letters in his bottom drawer.

He rinses his toothbrush; swills his mouth out; spits in the sink, leaning on the countertop. He looks down. He looks at his hands.

He realises, for the first time, that his wedding ring is gone. He hadn’t seen it since the night on the cliff; since his rebirth.

It must be laying, he thinks, like a body at the bottom of the ocean.

The thought makes him laugh.

-

They go to dinner one evening; Mr. Padillo’s again. They sit in a corner, their faces lit by the half-melted candle between them and the dim lightbulb in the centre of the room.

“You really meant it when you said you wouldn’t kill again unless it was for me,” Will says. It is not a question.

Hannibal’s eyes flash. “I did.”

Mr. Padilla brings their dinner to them.

They fall silent. They eat.

“You’d do anything for me,” Will says at last. He tries to keep his voice even. He is in control. He is the keeper. The words come out breathy and trembling.

Hannibal sits forward in his seat. His fingers tighten, Will sees, on his knife and fork.

“I would.”

Will wants suddenly, desperately, to kiss him.

“Take me home,” he says, and Hannibal reaches out at last across the table, and wraps his hand around Will’s.

“I will,” he says.

-

Here is the thing: Will doesn’t give a fuck about being Hannibal’s keeper; Hannibal’s jailer.

No jail in the world could possibly hold Hannibal Lecter if he had a mind to escape it; not even Will.

Hannibal could escape Will, if he really, truly wanted to – but he would not want to. He would be miserable. He would waste away, hungry and thin, starved for the affection and attention – the gaze into his dark, dirty soul – that only Will could provide.

Will knows this.

Will wants this.

Hannibal is so horrific Will cannot look away.

He does not even want to look away.

He loves it.

He loves him.

Will would gladly let the world burn if he knew it would make Hannibal happy; just as he knows Hannibal would make the world bleed to please Will.

Will wants to be good, when he can be.

Will also _wants._

Will has not allowed himself to want, not for years, because Will wants selfish things, bad things, dangerous things. Things nobody else wants but Hannibal.

Will had decided the second he had made up his mind to help Hannibal escape: this is it. This is his moral event horizon. This is where Will Graham finally, _finally,_ gets what he wants.

He lets himself bask in it, admit to it, that the reason he dropped over the cliff edge, the reason he had pulled Hannibal with him, was because he wanted to.

Because he had wanted to run away with Hannibal and he had always wanted to run away with Hannibal and he always would want to run away with Hannibal, and because this was it, his test, Hannibal’s test, the final test to see if Hannibal was worthy; if Hannibal would forfeit control and let Will take him into the ocean, unknowingly, and because he knew there was a small dock a short walk away from the beach that peeked out from the bottom of the cliff, below and to the side of the house that was far quicker and easier to reach from the sea than from the top of the cliff; and because he had seen on the journey up to the house that the few large houses lining the road all had motion-sensor security lights; and because they would need to clean themselves of the blood; and because they couldn’t leave a trail behind; and because he had decided the second he had seen the boats bobbing there on their drive up that he was going to steal one, and steal Hannibal, and leave the US, and go to Cuba, and _get what he fucking wanted for a change._

-

They get back to the house. The second Will pulls the door closed behind them, Hannibal grabs him, pushes him up against the wall, sticks his leg between Will’s thighs, presses their mouths together.

Will lets him; he feels the arousal and desperation and _ecstasy_ rolling off the other man in tidal waves. He has wanted this for so long.

Hannibal’s hot mouth is on his neck; his hands on his waist, fingers untucking his shirt.

“Wait,” Will says.

Hannibal growls against his skin, and shudders. But he pulls back, slowly, as though it physically pains him to do so, obediently.

Will thrills at it.

“I want to show you something,” he says.

Hannibal looks slightly put out.

“Don’t worry,” Will says. “I promise it won’t take long. I just wanna show you something, then I promise you can take me to bed and do all kinds of horrible things to me.”

“I don’t want to –” Hannibal starts, but Will cuts him off by standing on his toes, kissing the tip of his nose.

“Horrible,” he promises.

Hannibal looks like he wants to cry and laugh and get down on one knee all at once.

“Here,” Will says, and he takes Hannibal by the hand and leads him into the kitchen, where he had sat and tapped away at his tablet before they set out for dinner, checking the times for high tide whilst he’d waiting for Will to finish lacing up his shoes.

Will turns on the light, picks up the tablet, types in the address of the page he’d viewed several times over the past few days; the address that has been burnt furiously into his memory. It pops up as a suggestion, plucked from the browser’s memory.

The article loads.

Hannibal, pressed close to Will, reads it over his shoulder.

“Bluebeard’s Wife? Will, what is –”

Will scrolls down; shows the professionally-taken photograph of Bedelia, looking pale enough to appear shaken, victimized, but not unwell. Her back is straight as she stares out resolutely at some vulgar, fee-paying crowd of gawkers.

“You know she’s been giving talks about you,” Will says. “That’s why she’s calling the thing _Bluebeard’s Last Wife._ She’s making herself out to be the last. The survivor. The one who got away. We actually had a little talk about it, you know.”

Hannibal raises his eyebrows, studies the page in silence.

Will nestles closer, pressing into Hannibal’s side until the other man lifts his arm, and wraps it around Will’s waist once again. He holds onto him as though he’ll never let him go.

“Looks like lately she’s changed the speech up a bit, though,” Will says. “I guess she’s talking about me as well, now.  She always hated me.”

“Who could hate you?” Hannibal says, softly. His lips brush against Will’s hair.

Will laughs. “You’d be surprised.” He turns in Hannibal’s embrace; looks up at him. “She wants to be Bluebeard’s last wife. Guess the second you started blabbing to her about me she knew that wasn’t gonna happen.”

Hannibal tears his gaze from the tablet. “Was I really that obvious?” he says.

Will shrugs, grinning up at him.

Hannibal looks back at the tablet, briefly, then places it back down on the table.

“Bluebeard’s Last Wife,” he says, thoughtfully. “I really ought to rectify that regrettable misstep. It’s terribly rude of her.” He stops, suddenly, glancing down at Will.

He is asking for permission. It _thrills_ Will.

Will steps in front of him, pressing his body in between the jutting table top, and Hannibal’s hips. He grabs the lapels of his jacket, pulls him roughly down. He feels the excitement; the lust; the love; the fury emanating from the other man like cologne. It is everything that is theirs, and so wicked, and wonderful, and wrong, and beautiful. “We,” he says. “We ought to rectify it. And you’re gonna do it exactly how I want it.”

Hannibal moans – actually moans, out loud – and presses his forehead hard against Will’s. “Anything,” he says. “Anything for you, darling.”

They melt into one another, and the world is set alight around their bodies.

-

Will has known all along, deep down, the real reason why he’d thrown himself and Hannibal off the cliff.

He had hidden it from himself, challenging himself with silly ideas about being good, about being the saviour, about sacrificing himself with the beast, testing his own resolve.

Bullshit.

Will Graham has had enough of being good.

Will Graham is finally getting everything he wants.

 

**Author's Note:**

> hello hello! thank u if you got through this!! i would love a comment or a reblog on tumblr (death--stranded.tumblr.com) and i am obviously always up to discuss hannibal and dogs and things!!
> 
> a note on the bedelia scene - i am very iffy about writing violence against women, given that i am one myself, and that the media is saturated with enough images of injured ladies. i did not want to in any way sexualise or glamourise or make appealing what happens to bedelia. i don't want to make hannibal and will's "love" seem normal and natural and something we should all aim for either!!!! i want to make it clear i think they are both very fucked up people but it's the fucked up people who make for the most interesting stories. hopefully this comes across.


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